


my tomb will be a stage where great cities rise

by willowoftheriver



Series: empire (i'm building it with all i know) [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Aunt-Niece Relationship, Aunt/Niece Incest, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brother/Sister Incest, Canon-Typical Violence, Death in Childbirth, Domestic Violence, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Female Jon Snow, Fire, Forced Marriage, Genderbending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infidelity, Murder, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Off-screen Relationship(s), Pregnancy, Sequel, Stillbirth, Uncle-Niece Relationship, Uncle/Niece Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 12:17:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10990782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: Joanna casts her shadow on the wall.





	my tomb will be a stage where great cities rise

When Joanna wins her fourth war, Daenerys holds her naked, wailing nephew close, the blood and amniotic fluid seeping into the front of her dress. There’s a Rhaegar Targaryen in the world again, and for some reason, however illogical, she feels that here, in this moment, she’s finally met her brother.

After the infant is cleaned and swaddled, while Old Nan and Sansa and Maester Luwin attend Joanna, Daenerys takes Rhaegar out into the hall where the others are waiting.

“It’s a boy,” she tells them, hand passing over the transparent hairs on the crown of his head. A smile spreads across Arya’s face, something sly and nasty, and for the first time in her memory, Lord Stark looks _hopeful_.

Viserys isn’t there, as she expected. So she turns to the nearest servant.

“Ring the bells,” she says. “Let my brother know he has a son.”

.

Though the bells of Winterfell ring for him, Royalist soldiers toasting halfway across the continent and Lannisters pacing anxiously before the throne they paid for with spilt Targaryen blood, Viserys regards the infant with a cold, critical eye. He’s like a dog digging for a bone, keen to spot any flaw, any defect, anything sufficient to write him off as a bastard or leave him to the elements.

Rhaegar just waves his arms and legs, blinking grey-purple eyes and smiling toothlessly. His sisters coo at him, their fingers curled around the edges of his cradle. They’ve knitted him little blankets and socks under the instruction of their Septa and now they’re quick to bundle him up in all the red and grey material, eager to keep out the cold. The fire in the hearth hardly does anything anymore, and their breaths make little, comingling white clouds as they work.

“He’s too quiet,” Viserys bites out.

The girls stop, their smiles fading, faces turning wary. They hold their breath and watch for the minutest shift in his expression, well attuned to rapidly shifting moods and gauging the gradient severity of the outbursts brought with them.

“He’s a fine heir, Father,” Rhaenerys says, unwilling to divert her eyes. She weathers the attention that draws to her, so black and malicious, because there’s something else there alongside it. She’s _wounded_ him in some way, even though she doesn’t understand how. (She likes it, though. Maybe more than anything else she’s ever done.)

Small as she is, even Rhaella’s shoulders slump in relief when he leaves without a word.

.

“You’re plotting against me, aren’t you?” he asks her.

Dany shakes her head uselessly, but she doesn’t say anything. Because she _has_ imagined it. Over and over, again and again, how he might die, ways and times and scenarios. Blood and fire and pain.

What it might be like if he was gone.

“And—and the worst thing—the most _laughable_ thing—is that you’ve chosen _her_ over _me_! _Her_! Was _she_ the one who was there since the day you were born? Was she the one whose mother you _killed_ but who cared for you anyway? _Was she the one who did anything to make sure there was fucking food in your mouth and a roof over your head when we had nothing_? No! She was the _reason_ for all of it in the first place! She’s Rhaegar’s mistake with a black-haired Northern whore! It’s because of her that mother and father and Rhaegar are all dead but you’ll happily see me join them just for her sake. _Why_?”

There are tears on his cheeks. Alcohol on his breath. He’s hard against her hip.

He’s here with her instead of off with Joanna, though. She can stay peaceful and undisturbed in her bed, and for that, it’s worth it.

.

(Back in Essos, during that time she can barely remember anymore, they used to call him the _Beggar King_. Throneless and crownless and surviving off the scraps thrown by those amused by the sad little remnant of a crumbled dynasty.

Daenerys doesn’t think much has changed.)

.

In the last years, Dany has been sure to exercise a degree of _familiarity_ with her maids. A few of them she does genuinely like with a similar type of that warm fondness she feels for Sansa and Arya, but even the ones who set her teeth on edge she’s sure to placate with smiles and courtesies.

“My lady,” whispers the bravest of them, eyes wide and wet with horror and disgust. “Why does he do this to you? Why does he _keep_ doing this to you?”

The others flit around, trying to prepare the bath as quickly as they can. They act like they aren’t looking.

Daenerys doesn’t cover herself. Her skin is a testament to Viserys’s madness, a book that needs to be read.

“He is his father’s son,” she says, allowing a genuine waver to creep into her voice. After a pause, she adds: “Were it not for the Queen, I would think that the last dragon died with Rhaegar.”

She steps down into the boiling water, but not even the brightest flame is capable of making her warm. She doesn’t think she ever has been.

.

The snow has almost piled to the windows on the second floor. If Joanna climbed out, off and away from this conversation, she’d be in a wide expanse of featureless, teeming white, and within a day or so, it would cover her up and hide her away as though she never existed in the first place.

(She used to often imagine what things would be like if she hadn’t. But not so frequently anymore.)

“She’s ruined for marriage now,” Eddard Stark is saying behind her, very nearly tearing at his hair. He’s gone grey with amazing speed in these last years, the stress of being general and Lord and the Hand of this king leeching most of the life from him.

“How terrible,” Joanna deadpans.

Ned goes silent. He stares into the fireplace with faraway eyes for quite awhile, the shadows thrown by the flames flickering over his face.

“Joanna—” he finally begins, but she talks over him.

(She remembers a time when she never would’ve done that. A time when she thought he hung the moon and the sun and lived for every word from his mouth.)

“So she’ll stay here. He can’t legitimize it, however much he wants to. He knows he can’t lose the support of the North. If it’s a girl, I’ll—”

“I didn’t know,” he interjects. His voice is quiet and raspy, tired. “All Targaryens are—but I didn’t know the extent of what he is. How like Aerys he is. If I had . . .”

Joanna doesn’t look at him, just watches the snow fall like ash cast off of some massive fire. _All Targaryens are_ , he started to say, before he thought better of it.

All Targaryens are blond haired and purple eyed except for her, and that used to make her only just Targaryen enough to be hated for it, to die for it, but not enough to exactly _count_ in the way Viserys and Daenerys did. Except now she’s _unburnt_ , proven in fire, a true specimen of House Targaryen the likes of which hasn’t been seen in an age. She may look a wolf, but in her veins the dragonblood runs pure.

And all Targaryens are mad, in some way or another. Even Rhaegar, mild tempered and loved as he was—wasn’t he _mad_ , in the end? A madness consumed with prophecy and doom and lust for a girl he’d have best left alone? He never became _great_ , because being _liked_ and _admired_ and _fondly remembered_ isn’t the same thing, and in the absence of greatness, what other option is left to him?

They’re starting to say Joanna is great. It’s only a faint whisper in the air, a stir in the eyes that pass over her. The sum of House Targaryen doesn’t lie in Viserys anymore, and in that is a desperation for what she _could be_ , not what she is.

At least, not yet.

.

Dany has been avoiding her for weeks now that it’s become common knowledge. She supposes it must be out of humiliation and some misplaced, well intentioned attempt to not bring her any _shame_ , as though Viserys hasn’t already shamed Joanna in every way that he can.

He’s getting unholy enjoyment in this rift between them, gloating unbearably whenever Dany doesn’t come to meals or he finds Joanna in her own chambers at night.

Only now Joanna knows what it’s like when one of those smug smiles falls dead on his face, and she would very much like to see it happen again.

.

Sansa has learned cunning well at Tyrion’s knee these scant few years of their marriage. There was something deep and untapped in her that’s rapidly blossomed under his hand, twining itself around well-bred manners and a lady’s courtesies with astonishing effectiveness.

That’s why Joanna mentions to her, specifically, that Rhaella would appreciate having Daenerys at her nameday feast.

.

Dany walks into the hall amongst the whispers and the looks with her head bowed, her pride so dimmed it makes Joanna want to cry. Because Dany is _fire_ , burning hotter than Joanna ever could, not the flinching, retreating girl she was when they first met, that Viserys continually tries to reduce her to.

The hall falls silent when Joanna stands, Rhaegar on her hip, and steps carefully around the table. She feels as though she’s approaching a wild animal poised to flee at any wrong move.

She seems so _guilty_. As though this is her _fault_ , that Joanna could _blame_ her.

The silence seems to build, stretch on and up into an unbearable tension, and finally Joanna holds Rhaegar out.

“My children are yours,” she says, voice clear and pleasant as bell, because it’s only the truth.

Dany takes the baby automatically, wide eyed and staring at Joanna’s smile.

She lays a hand over the swell of her aunt’s belly.

“As yours are mine.”

.

There used to be whispers that Daenerys would’ve been a queen, if circumstances had been different.

(They still say it, if in a slightly different way.)

.

All the sheep are dead, so when the girls sew with their Septas, they use the scraps of worn clothes and blankets, trying to recycle them into something useful.

Joanna has never been particularly good at sewing, either as a girl or now. Still, sitting for hours in a small room filled with nearly every woman in Winterfell has its advantages.

Rhaenerys is more likely to obey her Septa and put forth effort in her mother’s presence, and the younger children enjoy each other’s company while Sansa sweetly coaxes gossip and rumors and secrets out of some of the women. Others offer it up for free, oblivious to the value.

Today, Rhaeherys bounces Rhaegar on her knee as she stabs artlessly at the material with her needle and thread. He coos and giggles, and eventually she gives up her work to tickle him.

“Will I marry Rhaegar one day?” she asks. Her Septa’s mouth, open to tell her to get back to sewing, closes with a snick of meeting teeth.

The girl doesn’t notice the sudden, overpowering awkwardness in the room, the disgust on many faces.

(Targaryens don’t have such a culture unto themselves anymore, such an exemption from the rest of the world. First Viserys wed his niece, and now he’s a _sister fucker_. The whispers wonder if he’ll stop at just that.)

“Only if you want to,” says Dany, looking up from her needle.

Most of the women eye her uncertainly. There’s always a _distance_ where Daenerys is concerned, not because she’s disliked, but because of the otherworldliness about her, a foreignness that only Joanna has ever truly been able to get past.

“It damn well better be only if she wants to,” comes Arya’s voice, the steady scrape of a whetstone over metal pausing.

“We all have our time, Arya,” Sansa says mildly, not even looking up. The girl rolls her eyes and gives a particularly vicious drag of the stone across her blade.

“Uncle Edmure is very happy with Lady Roslin,” she continues, and this time Arya out and out _snorts_.

“I will _slit_ Elmar Frey’s throat if he ever tries to put a cloak around my shoulders.”

“ _Arya_!” Sansa chastises sharply.

“You’re certainly putting your all into making him never want to,” Jeyne Poole says, with a suggestive little twist to her voice. Sansa smells blood.

“Are you implying something, Jeyne?” she asks innocently. Arya sends a _look_ their way, vicious and promising pain.

“I would never imply anything about your sister’s virtue, my lady.”

“How could anyone?”

(Sometimes, Arya runs away. The first time it happened there was a panic, search parties and dogs scouring the countryside for days until they finally dragged her back, unharmed and refusing to explain. The next time, they weren’t able to catch her. Now, they don’t even look, because after however many days or weeks out in the wide world, her virtue unprotected by her Lord father or any other chaperone, she always comes back.)

“I’m sure it’s only her . . . _swordplay_ instructor I’ve seen climbing to her window in the night,” says Jeyne.

The women titter. The whetstone grinds brutally against the blade.

“Is it someone we know?” Sansa prods, prepared to court the danger.

“I don’t believe so, my lady. He has very strange hair, but he’s still quite _handsome_. I must admit that I can see why your lady sister would want him to teach her to . . . handle a blade.”

With a strangled cry, Arya shoots to her feet, and Jeyne barely has time to scream before Needle bounces off the wall by her head.

.

“I didn’t kill Joffrey, you know. Really, I didn’t.”

Joanna rests her hands against the stone balcony, rocks back on her heels. She and Tyrion have a habit of discussing books when they’ve nothing better to do, but they’ve never before strayed further into anything else than general talk of Sansa and the children.

“My father, certainly. But Joffrey? On my lovely scenic journey north, I had hours stuffed into barrels and pushed up against pigs to think about it, and it only could’ve been the Tyrells.”

“The Tyrells? Their daughter was marrying him. She was going to be Queen.”

“That’s just it. _Their daughter was marrying him_. Lady Olenna didn’t want her granddaughter to wed a monster, so she made certain she wouldn’t.”

How very . . . _fortunate_ Lady Margaery is, to be so well watched over. It should be refreshing to hear of a girl with a family who values her so, but instead it just makes something go a little tight in her chest.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, more curtly than she usually is with him.

(She hates Lannisters. She hated them long before she ever even met one, when it was just her uncle telling her stories of Jaime the Oathbreaker standing over her King grandfather’s corpse and the siblings she’ll never be able to meet because of Tywin. Two heads of the dragon she was supposed to complete bashed in against the wall.

Tyrion is hideous and treacherous and not to be trusted, an injured lion in a wolf den waiting for any opportunity. But sometimes, Sansa smiles at him.)

He raises an eyebrow. “Do I need a reason to tell my Queen that I’m innocent of regicide? Though, as a relative-by-marriage, your Grace, let me tell you this: I _wish_ I had killed him. I _regret_ that I didn’t. You may think that you’ve been playing the game for all these years, but you haven’t. It’s only just beginning. Do you even know how to play at all?”

Her irritation wells up into a scowl. “And I suppose you having to flee the south with every man of your own House after the price on your head means that you _do_?”

He laughs, and if her life had been different, she might’ve missed the pain hidden in it. “I was outmaneuvered. I admit, I didn’t see it coming. Lady Olenna is a sly old bitch the likes of which are rarely seen, and I even admire her for it. But I’m not your Lord Uncle. I’m not your King husband. I _do_ know how this game is played. So whether you want me to or not, let me tell you something someone once told me: power is just a shadow on a wall. Illusionary and transitory. It takes only the smallest shift of the light to make it retract. Or expand.”

.

A warm, squirming, furry _thing_ is suddenly in her lap, and her children are shrieking. Instincts finely honed by years of a life under threat have her springing up, heart racing and muscles tense, but the girls are running _towards_ the thing on the floor, grinning.

It mews weakly.

“It’s all white,” says Theon, striding past. He collapses on a chair, booted feet finding the nearest low table. Daenerys glares, and he ignores it.

“Like—” He makes a vague gesture at Dany’s hair.

“Where did you find a Direwolf pup?” Joanna asks, pleased despite herself. She can’t keep from sliding to the ground to get nearer to it, holding her hand out for it to smell.

“There’s a whole litter of them. Six. The mother was dead just off the road back.”

“How did she die?”

He shrugs. “Birth? Robb didn’t want to leave the symbol of his House to die—convinced your uncle to bring them back. We didn’t know if you’d want one, but you can always drown it.”

Now Joanna glares at him. “Of course not. Girls, bundle her up and take her by the fire. I’ll send for some milk.”

Dany, her center of balance just beginning to be thrown off, pushes out of her chair and lowers herself awkwardly in front of the fire, the silver material of her dress bunched and crushed beneath her legs. She runs three fingers carefully through the sparse hairs on the pup’s head.

“What will we name her, Mother?” Rhaenerys asks.

 _Lyanna_ , she thinks unbidden, the name reaching the tip of her tongue before she forcibly bites it back. The memory of her mother is still too fresh, too cutting to too many people.

The pup squirms against the blankets the girls have swaddled her in, eventually pushing her mouth down to suck at the material. Her eyes and ears are still closed, and she looks too small for a Direwolf, even one just born. _The runt_. Nature wouldn’t have let her live, this phantom image of the Stark symbol with Targaryen hair.

When the milk comes, they all take turns dipping their fingers into the bowl and letting her suckle it off. The process starts slowly and unsteadily, the pup hesitant until her hunger eclipses it. Then she goes back again and again enthusiastically until there’s none left, even then licking at their bare fingers as though more would suddenly appear. Eventually, with a low whine, she pushes her little limbs against the ground and manages to slide over to the bowl, sticking her head in to lick at any residue.

Smiling and almost even warm, Joanna is reminded of a saying of Theon’s people.

_What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger._

“Ghost,” she says. “That’s her name.”

.

Viserys has a face that makes sneers look far more natural than smiling.

“Whatever halfbreed Northern savage you are, you’re also a Targaryen Queen. Direwolves have no place in a Targaryen household.”

His insults ring much more hollow now. (He’s never been proven by fire, whatever color his eyes are.)

Joanna looks him in those eyes and cradles Ghost to her chest and tells him, “We’re not in a Targaryen household. We’re under my Lord Uncle’s roof, and he is a Stark. As am I.”

.

“Bring me his head,” says Viserys.

The man shakes his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. “No, no, no, your Grace! I’ve told you the truth! I swear that I’ve—”

“What you’ve told me is a fictional _story_ used to scare children.” He shifts under his coat, turns annoyed eyes up to the grey sky and the falling snow. “Winter is here. We’re all cold and uncomfortable, yet the Crows seem to be handling it worse than a group of pampered, sniveling _ladies_.”

“We are _afraid_!” he yells, abruptly swiveling to face Joanna. He throws himself to his hands and knees in front of her, face nearly touching the snow.

“My Queen,” he says, voice trembling. “We’ve heard of you, even on the Wall. They say you’re temperate and wise. Prince Rhaegar’s true heir.”

“Seize him!” Viserys demands. “Make an example out of him!”

“Your Lady mother was a Stark!” he calls to her as they drag him away. “ _Winter is here_! And they’ve come with it!”

Later, as she and Theon stand and watch Osha watch the man’s body sway to and fro in the wind, Joanna tells him, “I can give you things Viserys won’t.”

He snorts.

“Do you think I haven’t heard that your uncle Euron is circling like a vulture, waiting for your father to die? He’ll fan the flames of rebellion once again, call one of your peoples’ _Kingsmoots_ —”

“Someone’s been talking to Asha,” he mutters.

“They won’t support you. But I will.”

“So you’ll deal with Euron. Viserys would, too.”

Viserys _might_ , if he’s in the mood when the time comes. They both know that, however much Theon wants to deny it.

“What,” he continues, “are you saying you’ll make me a king?”

“No one will do that. But I’ll give you leave to marry who you please.”

Theon looks away from Osha quickly, eyes settling stubbornly off to the side. “You _much_ overestimate how much I care for the savage whore, you stupid woman,” he says with a condescending laugh.

“ _Legitimatize_ who you please,” she continues pointedly. He can say what he will about Osha, but he certainly can’t pretend not to care for his son.

He just can’t help being difficult, though.

“I’m not your stepping stone to power. I’m not your _bitch_.”

She scoffs, barely resists rolling her eyes. “If you do not think very carefully about your next move, Theon, then you’ll be Asha’s. She’s not stupid enough to tell me no.”

.

Joanna has taken to standing in Daenerys’s space in public. Putting a hand on her arm. Letting the fine white mist of their breath mingle and their faces draw close, hair sweeping against each other’s shoulders. Sometimes, her hand strays down to caress her belly and she strokes it over the hard skin, smiling at the movement she finds.

.

(“They say the Princess is the most beautiful woman in the world. Anyone with eyes can see that. And the Queen . . .”

“Do you ever wonder if Lady Sansa . . .?”

“Hah! I’m surprised the Imp was strong enough to pry her legs apart on their wedding night. She’s too damn proper. Not like Targaryen women.”

“How are Targaryen women, then?”

“Too much for Targaryen men!”)

.

Arya’s swordplay has improved recently.

(She was already better than Robb. Nearly better than everyone.)

“He sort of is my weapons instructor,” she says. Joanna can’t follow her footwork as she does an elaborate spin and slices the head clean off of a dummy. The thick layer of snow doesn’t seem to affect her at all.

(Joanna had liked swords, once. She’d practiced with the boys for a while before Lady Stark and her septa put a stop to it, because queens are wives and mothers who sing and sew and run a royal household.

In a different life, she would’ve been named Visenya. But the life of Aegon’s sister was never to be hers.)

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Arya.”

Arya snorts. “No more than the one you’re playing.” She whirls Needle in a way that makes Joanna fear for her fingers and clips off one of the dummy’s arms, then bisects the torso.

(When Joanna was heavy with her first child and Lady Stark was beginning to insist that Arya’s place was inside at her septa’s sewing lessons, she went to the blacksmith and commissioned a special order.

Joanna was born tangled in the strings that her parents had left behind and forced to dance on them, and much had been taken from her because of that. But she could try to make it so that this was the only needle Arya ever had to use.)

“He’s not a normal man. He’s—” She hesitates on her next strike, lowering Needle. She reaches up to chip off drops of sweat where they’ve frozen to her hairline. “He has connections in Essos. For enough money, you could—”

“Arya—”

“Viserys wouldn’t be a problem anymore! And the power you would have behind you—”

“Power you pay for is no power at all.”

Arya growls, throwing Needle down into the snow and clenching her fists. Nymeria whines at her mistress’s distress. “It’s better than what you’ve got now! You have Rhaegar! What more do you need? What are you _waiting_ for?!”

Joanna doesn’t answer her. She doesn’t _know_ what she’s waiting for.

Just that it hasn’t happened yet.

.

Tyrion and Sansa’s new daughter is just as lovely as their son, with the same strawberry blond hair and blue eyes darkening to green. In both of them, Joanna can see the phantom image of what their father could’ve been. Would’ve been.

“We thought—” Sansa trades a look with her husband, fidgets anxiously with the edge of the baby’s blanket. Lady nuzzles the newborn’s side. “Tyrion’s mother’s name was Joanna. So we wondered if perhaps we might . . . name her after both of you.”

Viserys has reminded her more than once that she shares the name of the Kingslayer’s mother. He doesn’t want her to forget how his father must be rolling in his grave or how unbefitting it is for a Targaryen of any sort, much less a Queen.

(She’s often wondered why Lyanna chose it.)

It makes her smile to think about how much he’ll hate this.

.

Whenever her father is angry, which is lots of times, Rhaella used to go and run to Rhaeherys to make her feel better. Except that eventually proved to be risky, because if Rhaenerys was ever around to see it, she’d sneer and say that _oh, it must be_ so _hard being Daddy’s favorite_.

Rhaella hides alone now.

(She wishes Rhaenerys would realize. Their father doesn’t have favorites.)

.

Joanna and Daenerys are, by this point, used to shows of solidarity both large and small. They’ve made the conscious decision since they were little girls to dress in complimentary outfits, to do their hair in similar styles, to move and talk in accordance with each other. Never in public do they disagree, and an oath made by one is an oath sworn to by both.

One of the smaller things is that during all of Joanna’s pregnancies, Dany had stopped partaking of wine alongside her. Therefore, Joanna is now obliged to do the same, however easier this _celebration_ might be made if she wasn’t quite so sober.

Euron Greyjoy is _smiling_ at her, and it’s very fake and ugly, like he’s only badly copying an action he’s seen others do.

Oh, he’s been nothing but perfectly polite, and his gift _is_ very nice, but as he tells her with a thick, put upon sweetness that _the stories didn’t do the Targaryen Queen’s beauty justice_ , she can only shift uncomfortably. She feels grimy.

Euron doesn’t just want the Iron Islands. He wants the world. And he’s a far more vicious man than his brother, maybe even vicious enough to get it.

(At least Theon is frowning. She might even go so far as to say he looks scared.)

As he finally backs away, Euron’s bow has just enough of a mocking edge to it to be understood. He brushes past a figure that Joanna barely notices until her uncle tenses and the guards step forward, hands moving to the pommels of their swords.

“Who are you?” Viserys sneers, idly poking his fork into the food on his plate over and over again. If it was up to him, Joanna wouldn’t acknowledge her nameday at all. _What’s to celebrate, my sweet? The ruin of our House? My brother’s death?_

“How did you get in here?” Ned demands, rising to his feet, but the cloaked figure just raises a pale hand.

“I mean no harm. I only bring gifts on this anniversary of such a _wondrous_ day. For the first, the head of a false king.”

From under the billows of the cloak, the hand pushes out a trembling child. She staggers forward, barely upright, sobbing mutely and staring at Joanna with the rawest horror she’s ever seen.

The swollen head clenched in her hands drips blood and fluid onto the floor that Viserys had, just this morning, made the serving girls get down on their knees to scrub until their fingers were purple and iced halfway through. Joanna is struck with the most bizarre, surreal sense of guilt, perhaps because her mind has no idea what else to feel.

“Stannis Baratheon?” her Uncle exclaims, just as the woman finally deigns to lower her hood. Hair a far deeper red than either Sansa’s or Lady Stark’s spills down in waves, and Joanna immediately understands. Everyone knows of Lord Stannis’s reliance on strange magics and the red woman who stays a shadow at his side—more his queen than his Lady wife would ever be.

“My second gift to the Targaryen Queen—the last true heir of the usurper’s House, to do with as you please.”

The girl still doesn’t make a sound, but her father’s head falls from her hands and she shoves her face into her shoulder, unable to look at it. Joanna seems to recall that her name is Shireen.

“Why would you betray your master?” Viserys demands, motioning the guards closer. “They say the red whore never leaves his side!”

“It _is_ Stannis,” Tyrion mutters, eyeing the head critically. Next to him, Sansa barely twitches, just readjusts her hand over their son’s eyes.

The Red Woman looks at Viserys like he’s an afterthought, something barely even there. “The Queen was conceived of ice and fire. She is the fulfillment of a promise. I have looked into the flames and seen her there among them, unburnt. House Targaryen lies dead, but from the ashes of the realm, it will be reborn through her. And so I give her my final gift.”

She manages to set a case down to the floor before the guards take hold of her.

“Throw her into the deepest cell and don’t give her anything to eat,” Viserys seethes. His fork has formed a hairline crack in the plate, his knuckles white around the metal. “Don’t even give her a bucket to piss in!”

The Red Woman just smiles a knowing, serene little smile at Joanna and nods down to the case. The hem of her dress looks like a shimmering river of blood as it trails after her to her cage.

.

Dany loves the dragon eggs more than any of them; it’s a deep fascination in her bones that keeps her awake at night. Sometimes, when Joanna’s milk runs low, she nurses Rhaegar herself with one breast and keeps an egg nestled just under the other, encouraging the baby to rest his hand on it. Their nails scrape together over the roughshod stone surface, tracing imperfections, soaking up the heat that radiates from within.

“I don’t know where she found them,” she whispers into the crown of the baby’s head. His hair is like down, pale white and nearly fine enough to be rubbed off his scalp. “But we’re not alone anymore.”

.

“She’s—she’s _ugly_ ,” Bran whines, staring despondently out at the grey, sunless sky. It’s the most he’s spoken in a week. “I mean, her face . . .”

“Are you telling me you cannot manage to be as strong as Sansa was?”

“No!” he exclaims, slamming his hand to the stone windowsill. He finally spins to face her, wiping violently at his face to try to hide his tears. “But why—why does it have to be _me_? Why can’t—?”

“Rickon is still too young. Your mother has already been over this with you.”

“But I—”

“I’ve only spoken with her a few times, but Shireen seems a kind girl. Even to _me_ , and she certainly has no reason to be.”

“I’ve never even spoken a word to her,” he chokes out, jerkily turning back around. His shoulders shake even as he braces his arms against the windowsill to try to still them. Summer whines and noses at his shin, his tail dragging sadly over the floor.

“Nor she to you, incidentally. She has no idea who you are, Bran, and she’s a prisoner here. She has no idea how she’s going to be treated.”

Bran swipes his cheeks futilely again. “W-what should I do, then? It’s not like I can make it all better.”

Joanna steadies his shoulders herself, runs a hand fondly through his hair. “No, but you can be kind. If nothing else, just be kind to her. Show her that you’re a good man.”

.

Bran and Shireen marry in the sight of Stannis Baratheon’s clouded white eyes. They sit decaying to dust in the remnants of a head shoved on a spike, metal protruding through the top of a shattered skull.

.

They all sleep in the same bed, Joanna and Dany and the four children and Ghost, but even with the dragon eggs sitting in a roaring fire in the hearth, it’s not enough to keep warm. The cold slithers in past the flames, under the blankets, between their skin.

That’s why the rush of wet warmth over her legs, when it comes, is enough to startle her awake.

.

The girl comes quickly and quietly into the world, staring up at Joanna with wide mauve eyes.

If only her brother could’ve done the same.

.

The strength is already starting to fade from Dany’s fingers when she smiles and tries to reach out and touch her daughter’s face. But her hand is pale and cold and only makes it halfway before falling back to the bed, and Joanna grips the other all the tighter.

She spares a glance over to the dead _thing_ where Sansa cradles him, wrapped away in bloody towels, but her eyes seem to slide sightlessly over the rest of the room, from the septa screaming about monsters and dragonblood to where the midwives work between her legs, trying to stop the bleeding.

Her face is too pale. She doesn’t seem to notice the tears on it.

“Her name is Jhaena,” she says. Rasps. “Please, Joanna. Keep her safe. Please, please . . .”

.

There are hands on her. Arms around her, a shoulder against her face.

People are talking and shouting and a baby is crying in the distance.

Joanna has never been so alone.

She’s never been so cold.

.

“We’ll bury her next to your mother,” Eddard tells her, and his voice seems long and distorted. It’s a hole of black ice and she could sink beneath it, drown in it. “With the full honors of a princess. We’ll have a statue commissioned.”

And she imagines Daenerys there, in that deep, dark crypt, trapped in a box. The cold will keep her whole until the summer comes; it’ll freeze her blood in her veins, preserve the shredded, gaping wound that is her womb. She’ll be caught forever in the present, an insect in amber.

“No,” Joanna croaks, her voice jagged as a rusty blade. She lifts her face from the wet, disgusting patch of material she’s left on Sansa’s shoulder. It feels like her skull’s become iron, pulling against the flesh of her head, too heavy for her neck.

“Burn her.”

.

Ghost screams all night, sitting in the courtyard shrieking grief to a beautiful, indifferent sky.

.

Joanna takes the three dragon eggs and lines them up, one in each of Dany’s hands, the last tucked just below where the dead boy rests against her heart.

Then she burns it all.

.

(She doesn’t understand how, but she knows that deep beneath her feet, in a little cell with no window, the Red Woman is awake. Is listening.)

.

“It should’ve been you.”

Joanna doesn’t say anything at first. Just stands there, the fire beating against her front, the snow at her back. Flames have a way of almost dancing, and as she stares, stares, stares at them licking up towards the stars in the sky, she thinks she sees figures in the shadows they cast. She thinks she sees a story being told.

“Every time you went to the birthing bed I would hope that you would just die, but _no_ , no, four times and you’re _fine_! But Dany— _Dany_ —”

She nods jerkily, snow falling from her hair. “Yes. I wish it had been me.”

Sometimes she thinks she can remember the smell of roses and blood.

(Ice and fire are anathema to each other. They shouldn’t make anything other than water, there for a moment before slipping through your fingers.)

“And you should throw that little bitch on the pyre with her!”

Joanna’s hands twitch at her sides, drawing up into fists. “She’s your daughter.”

“I already have three, I don’t need another one! She killed Daenerys!”

Finally she turns to him, though it’s slow, so slow. The world hasn’t been moving correctly ever since Dany left it.

Viserys is beautiful standing there, even with his blown eyes and twisted lips. The firelight glints off the snow scattered in his hair, picks up its tones of silver and gold.

(Joanna tastes metal on the roof of her mouth. The smell of blood has run down the back of her nose to her tongue.)

“She didn’t kill anyone. Neither did her brother. It was _you_.”

Viserys looks so outraged by that, but when isn’t he? His existence tilted on its axis a long time ago, and no matter how many years pass, there’s still just a festering mass of scar tissue where his heart once was. It will never heal, however many crowns, however many thrones, however many kingdoms. All that’s left to him is outrage and anger and an abstract, injured loathing of everyone and everything.

“How dare you—?”

“Me? How dare _you_! How _dare_ you come here, into the House of Stark— _invited_ when you had _nothing_ , no recourse, were nothing but a _Beggar King_ —and act as though the legacy of a dead House gives you _power_. You have won no battles, taken nothing for yourself—everything you are, everything you have, is what’s been handed to you for the grace of your hair and your eyes, _Viserys_ , and you are _nothing_.”

The blow is the hardest he’s ever given her. But it doesn’t hurt. Her skin is too cold.

Her bones jar when she hits the ground and she stays there, her back to him, letting the snow melt beneath her palms.

“You filthy bastard whore! I—”

She just laughs. “You’ll what? Kill me? Throw me on the pyre, alongside the sister you killed? No, you won’t do that.”

She takes Arya’s hand and pulls herself up. Breathes in snowflakes and smoke and metal. “Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

When she turns around and closes the distance between them in two large steps, Viserys’s eyes widen. He takes one breath of her air, two, three, staring at her in shocked confusion before he finally looks down between them.

She twists Needle in his stomach as he does.

“Fire cannot kill a dragon, Viserys,” she whispers sweetly into his ear, like a lover’s caress. Then she throws herself against him, his legs giving easily.

The fire catches his hair first. The snow evaporates in an instant and all of the beautiful spun gold chars to black like dry straw.

He wails and shrieks, louder and more frantic than a newborn child, and she presses her cheek to his forehead, murmuring a chant of _ice fire blood_ into the seared skin as she twists the sword again. Her lips trace it over and over against his brow until there’s no more flesh left, until his blood has seeped across her abdomen and down her thighs.

 _Ice, fire, blood_ , she says, her mouth soundlessly forming the words. She crawls through the flames as they wash across her skin like water, lost in a haze of smoke and ash, offering up her words to the abyss, to anything that might listen.

_I will reclaim what is mine; in icefireblood, I will take it. I will rule a kingdom greater and vaster than any this world has seen, lions and stags and snakes and free men will all bow to me._

_But—_

She digs her fingers into the ground, pulls herself along, lets the soot grind up under her nails. Daenerys lies as if she were sleeping, naked and peaceful in a fiery womb. Joanna rests her head on her breast, listens to the empty silence of her chest. She wonders if Dany is finally warm.

_But not if I’m alone._

.

There’s a rumor, twining its way south on the winter wind. It falls like snow across villages and holds, twisting in the air down roads and rivers, in the back rooms of inns, through encampments of soldiers. Eventually it creeps into the Court of the Iron Throne, attaches to merchants who bring it to the perfumed sands of Dorne.

Far in the west, picking its way slowly through an icy sea, is a fleet of ships. Ironborn once, but the kraken has bent the knee and the Greyjoy heir stands on a deck beneath foreign colors, a flag of black and grey.

It is not entirely a Targaryen flag, because it is not Viserys the Throneless who sits, adorned in Queen Rhaella’s crown, at the head of the fleet.

Queen Joanna I of the Houses Targaryen and Stark wears no dress, but rather armor, a sword at her hip, a vision of Visenya made flesh. At her feet lies a white Direwolf nearly the size of a horse, watching, always watching, with eyes the scarlet red of fire and blood.

Around her dances a court of women and freaks, an Imp and a Red Witch, a man with two toned hair and no face, highborn ladies who spit on the trappings of womanhood to be warriors, and a grey old lord, driven half mad from years of playing a game never meant for him.

Beside her in the eye of the storm, in a dress of shimmering silver, sits the woman they call the most beautiful in the world. She is ethereal and untouchable, pale and radiant as a star in the sky. The Stranger himself couldn’t bring himself to take her, so moved he was by her beauty, and now a delicate crown of dragons and fire rests upon her head, too grand for a princess.

(They say that perhaps, she _is_ the Queen. That she is more Joanna’s consort than Viserys ever was.)

The rumor has one last detail, a little coda at the end. It goes that if you were to walk out onto the deck and look up into the sky, squint carefully past mist and snow, you would make out three silhouettes gliding along, swooping and spinning together, wings beating against the air.

You might even hear them crying their existence to the world.

**Author's Note:**

> It--it's over. It's finally over. This was such a bitch to write I think I'm certifiably insane now. Also my computer is like ten years old and dying and the keyboard randomly stops working on and off.
> 
> In the beginning I was like, Viserys has to die in fire somehow. Then I was like, how the fuck am I going to get him there? So this entire fic was just me trying to find a way to get Viserys and a big ass fire in proximity to each other. (hahaha thank god it's over)
> 
> The story title comes from the song 'King' by the Romanovs, and the series name is from the song 'Empire' by Alpines.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your response to the previous story! Without it I certainly never would've gotten this one written!
> 
> -Anna


End file.
